Question of the Week: 88 - 12/8/2002Are We Alone in The Universe?Is this Earth the only planet inhabited with intelligent life? (Yeah. I wonder about that "intelligent" part sometimes, too!) Is Life a fluke? Are we unique? If there are other life forms out there, do you think that we shall ever meet them? How far into the future might that happen? Will they find us or will we find them first?

Do you think that the discovery of inhabitants on other planets would change our world view? How would the existence of aliens affect the religions of this world? Do you think such a concept as "religion" might also be found on other worlds?

Have we already been visited by beings from other planets? If an alien did come calling, what might you show him/her/it about life on planet Earth? Would you like to travel to another planet?

we are not alone. there are spirts always around us, some u may see, some u may feel, and some may be another person. theres earth, then a type of chill place, and then what ever is beyond. no we are never alone.

Why bother with that question. What difference does it make? I have to live my little life here. If there where other life in the universe there is little to no chance that we are ever gonna meet up. It's a waste of money and time that people wast on questions like that. Let them spend it on a solution to more earthly problems........ like how to stop poluting our own little living space and how to do that in such a way that we can all benifit from that. How to feed all, how to get rid of all the war.

If we are this perfect little brady bunch planet lets then put energy in the questions that matter a lot less. Cause if their is life in the universe besides us and we would make contact now, we probably do the same with them as we did here with native cultures.

I,my self a wiccan, believe that I am never alone,I always have my spirit guides with me and the spirits around me and as a member of life i believe there is life outthere as alien no. We don't live in a universe. We live in a multi-verse, One filled with many diffrent relmes of existance. feel free to e~mail me if you want to. I don't care. ~Blessed Be

Alone, never. Although I do not believe that Earth has received visitors of the green kind, I do believe that life on other planets exist (as well as on other planes of existence, obviously). Mars is a pretty darn similar planet to Earth and that's within our own solar system. Now imagine the VASTNESS OF SPACE. I think every galaxy has at least 1 planet that has life on it.

For those of you who like aliens.The stereotype: pale skin and huge retinas. I can theorize that they live on a dark planet. Enough of that now.

Alone? What a waste of space! (no pun intended) Who says there are only three dimensions? And for those that use the "we would be overrun by UFO's by now" theory: if you were an alien species would you really wanna let yourself known, let alone stick around on a planet where it's "higher" beings can't seem to get it through their thick heads that war is bad?? C'mon. I say they came around, some FBI agent convinced 'em mosquitos are an endangered species and saved the world (ok, so I've seen Lilo and Stitch too many times. So sue me, it's a good theory. :}) Common sense alone says there is life out there, either that or it's all a big conspiricy and the universe is nothing more then a complicated holigram and we are all really in hamster cages driving hot wheels cars. Right, time to get some sleep...

... to think we're the only forms of life in the universe. As far as we know, the universe is infinite. The idea that only our planet can contain any sort of life seems a bit naive. Also, you have to take into account not only our dismension, but other ones. I think the very idea of existence is a fluke within itself. But if nothing existed, then would space still exist?

Anyway, I think we'll probably stumble onto them. I think that either they're primitive by our standards, or they've already seen our actions and basic alien philosophy and decided it was a better idea to stay where they were. I'm not even going to start on alien psychology because that's all speculation. Who knows, maybe they don't have anything that we would consider to be a 'mind' or intellect.

I think that if human civilzation does manage to make contact with alien, then we will eventually end up battling them, and become parasites, moving on from world to world, using their reasources until we've dried up the planet. Buahahaha!!!! ::grabs hat with antenni and giggles insanely::

I feel if would be pretty arrogant of us to assume that our planet around our sun, out of all the millions of suns and subsequint planets out there is the only one to support life. I'm sure there are other planets out there that have an atmospheric environment capable of supporting life. (Don't forget, small micro-organisms have been found on Mars. They just ran out of oxygen because of the lack of tecttonic forces).

Other inteligent species may not have a religon. Or they might have one that is startilingly similar to one on earth. Or they may have one that's totally different. I don't see how it is possible to know.

There is also the pretty big thing about the Great Pyramids being the in the exact same shape as the constalation, Orion. Also, thos pyramids would be difficult for us to build now in this day and age. How did the Ancient Egyptians build them when they had none of the technology we have? Maybe some aliens helped them, gave them the technology. A more far-fetched theory of mine is that the pyramids were a way of markin our planet so they would be able to find it again. Whether for invasion, or to teach us, or even just to know how we evolved.

We're not alone. I can not even think why we would be! The Gods, more likely the 'Source, the One, or Diety' wouldn't be that LAZY. Come on, people! We know they don't look like us, move like us, or talk like us! No because tehy are more advanced, because to be more evolutionarily advanced you have to have been part of that Evolutionary cycle, but because they are from different places! I know that they aren't the Gods, because the Gods are removed. They are probably at the same degree of Evolution (civilized, basic space travel, Republicans) because if the Gods wanted us to meet, (EVENTUALLY WE WILL) they don't want us to be scared, actually, we're probably only halfway to the meeting point.

We have never been alone. If you observe the actions of life all around us on a daily basis you will see young and old and all thats between moving in an intricate dance of birthing - living - dying. The universe obviously functions in the same way. To look at the night sky and think that we are the only ones to see and marvel at its great expanse and the immense population of stars, knowing that our unaided eyes can only see a very tiny percentage of what is out there is insanely egocentric at best.

We continue to find life, microbal to be sure, in some of the most unexpected places. It has been found in the coldest and driest places in Antarctica, in the solid rock of oil well bores plunging 5,000 feet below the surface and in the "black smokers" of the mid ocean ridges. Life seems to be just about everywhere you look. Intelligent life is extremely rare though. And highly intelligent life may perhaps be the rarest of all.

The late Carl Sagan ounce did a mathmatical excersise in which he followed a .1% of 1% reduction through several steps to calculate how many possible worlds in the Milkey Way galaxy, our home town, would possibily support not only intelligent life but societies that would become space faring races. As I recall, sorry I don't have the article handy, the formula went through 6 steps and ended up by multiplying the max number of stars in the galaxy by .000001%. Dr Sagan came up with the estimated number of potentially star faring races of approximately 62,500 in the Milkey Way galaxy alone. Then there are all of those other Galaxies out there. About 4-500 billion of them that we estimate to exist.

So much for scientific reasoning on the subject. Then there are those of us who are aware of "other planes of existance" ( for want of a better descriptive phrase ). How do we map and explore what our senses only vaguely hint at under the best of conditions? I include the mind as a "sixth" sense here - both because of its unknown powers and seeming sensitivity to that which we cannot see. I don't have an answer for this one and neither , it seems, does anyone else.

The late Robert Heinlein summed it all up very concisely when he said " The universe may not only be stranger than we imagine - It may be stranger than we can imagine". We are not alone and we do not know what our neighbors look like. Perhaps a little scary - but VERY interesting.

I doubt that the universe is devoid of intelligent life when this marginally habitable planet has given rise to at least two wildly different intelligent species. :)

The real question is why any visiting aliens would want to talk to us. Personally, I'd be much more interested in what a whale has to say, since they have survived so much longer and achieved harmony with thier enviornment.

Anyone who watches South Park can probably already tell what my answer is... In the "Marklar" episode (I don't remember the actual title), we discovered intelligent life on another planet, and some people (ahem) immediately made it their mission to tell them the good news about Jesus and make sure they converted to the "true" way.

Yep, I think there is intelligent life out there somewhere. I imagine they either wonder the same about us, or already know the answer (and the silence in our corner is deafening... lol). And I think if they ever paid us an official visit that much would be made over whether or not they "know the true way".

It wouldn't change my worldview much, but it would certainly make things interesting. However, since some of us here have difficulty getting along with our neighbors (who are more like us than we sometimes like to admit), I doubt it would be smooth sailing all the way. I'd LOVE to visit another planet, just to see what their lives are like.

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